example use of sitation mark s. daskin department of ioe university of michigan ann arbor, mi 48109

Example Use of SITATION

Mark S. Daskin

Department of IOE

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Summer, 2010 ©, 2010, M.S. Daskin, University of Michigan 2

Two problems to be solved

1. Minimize the demand weighted total distance (or average distance)

• Using 10 facilities• To serve the 150 largest demands in the continental

US

2. Find tradeoff between the % of covered demands and the average distance with

• A coverage distance of 300 miles• And 8 facilities


First step

Double click on the SITATION.EXE software. This will load the software. You will see an ABOUT box for about 2-3 seconds followed by the main menu


Here is the main menu

First you have to load the dataset you want to load.

Click on Load Data


To load the data ….

First tell SITATION what kind of distances you are using• Euclidean (straight line)

• Great Circle (shortest distance on a sphere)

• Manhattan (right angle)

• Network

Click on GREAT CIRCLE


Now

Click on Specify Demand File


Now tell it which file to read

Either double click on a file name or type the file name into the box labeled File name and then click Open

Double click on 150city.grt in this example


Now tell it how to get the distances

You can either have SITATION compute the distances or you can give it a file name containing the actual distances. Most of the time I let it compute the distances

In this example click on Compute Distances


Now you are almost done loading the data

If you want the distances computed in kilometers instead of the default of miles, click on the box asking it to use kilometers. Note that the labels throughout SITATION will still read miles even thought distances are in km.

We will NOT do this in this example


Also note

SITATION tells you the name of the file it will read and the number of nodes to be read.


Finally,….

To actually compute the distances and get back to the main menu, simply click on Exit and Load Data


But first …

SITATION will ask if you want to save the distances. You almost never do, so just click No


Now you are back at the Main Menu

You must now specify the coverage distance and a cost per mile even if the model to be run does not call for these values. They are used for reporting purposes

Click on Set Parameters


Now …

Type in a coverage distance (e.g., 300)

And a cost per mile (e.g., 1)


Now

If you notice the Done and Run box is now available. Clicking this will allow you to go back to the Main Menu. You can also force sites in or out of the solution using the Force Nodes option. We will not do that in this example.

Click Done and Run


Before getting back to the Main Menu

SITATION tells you how large the cover list is. This is just for information purposes and you can usually ignore it.

Click OK


Now

SITATION will let you run either single or multiple objective (Tradeoff Curve) problems. We want a single objective problem (the P-median problem) so click on Run Models


First you must tell SITATION which problem to solve

Click on the problem to be solved. In our case we want the P-median problem


Problems available

Maximal covering – maximize the number of covered demands in the specified coverage distance with a fixed number of facilities

P-median – minimize the demand weighted total distance locating a fixed number of facilities

Uncapacitated fixed charge – minimize the sum of the fixed costs and demand weighted transport costs


And

Set covering – find locations of the minimum number of facilities needed to cover all demands within the specified coverage distance

P-center – find locations of a user-specified number of facilities to minimize the coverage distance needed to cover all demands

Partial set covering – same as set covering but the model can exclude (not cover) a user-specified number of nodes or fraction of the total demand


And

Partial P-center – like the P-center except that the model will allow a user-specified number of nodes or fraction of demand to be outside the reported coverage distance

Inventory/Location (SCD) model – find the DC locations, market assignments to DCs and DC inventory policy to minimize fixed DC costs, inventory costs at the DC, shipment costs to markets and shipment costs from plants to DCs


How do you want to solve the problem?

You must now tell SITATION which of several algorithms to use to solve the problem. In general, you should use Lagrangian Relaxation. This embeds LR in branch and bound and guarantees optimal solutions.


Specify the number to locate

Tell the model how many sites to locate. For some models (e.g., the uncapacitated fixed charge problem, specifying –1 tells SITATON to find the best number)

Type 10 in the indicated box


Now…

You can set the parameters of the Lagrangian Relaxation algorithm. This is a bit complex and we will skip it in this example.

Do NOT click on View and Set Lagrangian Options


We are now ready to run the model

By clicking on Quit and Run you ask SITATION to solve the problem


Lagrangian Progess Form

This form tells you information about the progress of the algorithm including the bounds on the solution


The total number of iterations


And

Information on the branch and bound tree


And …

Which nodes are forced in (+) out (-) and undecided (0) at this point in the branch and bound algorithm


And …

What percent of the branch and bound tree has been explored so far


When the algorithm finishes …

You should see this information box.

Click OK


You can now

Display the results


Or

Map the results


Or

Manually modify the results for some objectives


First

We will display some results. Click on Display Results


You can now

Display a lot of results.

First click on Basic Inputs and Outputs


This summary shows

A summary of the basic model inputs


And

Model outputs including the problem and algorithm being solved, statistics on how long it took to solve it, and the objective function values


Go back

Once you have studied this report click Cancel to return to the menu of reports


Now see where you locate

Click on Extended Summary to see where SITATION located facilities


Extended Summary

This tells you where you locate facilities, the number of covered demands, the % of demands covered, the average weighted distance, and the total cost


And the verdict is…

Note that the average weighted distance should be 127.13 miles if you solved this correctly


And now…

After studying this report click Cancel


Show the number of nodes covered X times

Click on Number of Times Covered


This report shows

That in this solution 25 nodes (and 6,454,361 demands) are not covered at all, 115 nodes are covered once and 10 are covered twice


And now

When you are done looking at this click Cancel


Now find out how demands are assigned to facilities

Click on AssignMent to Sites


Assignment to Sites

This shows which facility is assigned to serve each demand area, the distance between them, whether the demand area is covered, the demand there, etc.


Assignment to Sites

As well as the maximum assigned distance and the total demand weighted distance


Go back ….

Click on Cancel to go back to the reports menu


And so on

There are many other reports, graphs (for some problems) and options to save results. Experiment with them. They should be self explanatory.


Go back to the Main Menu

To get back to the main menu, click Quit (return to main menu)


Now we can Map the solution

Click on Map Results


Tell it what the border file is

If you have a file giving the coordinates of the border of the region under study, click Yes; otherwise click No

Click Yes now


Tell it which file to read

Double click on the name of the desired border file


Here is the map

This shows the locations of the facilities and the demand nodes assigned to each facility

Click on option 2 Show Names to see the facility names


Here we are

Here are the names. Other options let you change what is displayed on the map


Zoom in

To zoom in, drag the mouse from top left to bottom right of the region to zoom on


Zoomed map

Click on Show all names to label all sites


Here are all the city names

Cities connected to facilities by red lines are within the coverage distance

Cities connected to facilities by blue lines are further than the coverage distance


Zoom out

To return to the original map, drag a box from the lower right to the upper left


Get rid of city names

Click on Blank to get rid of the city names


Now see other maps

Click on % Demand to see the relative demands


Map of relative demands

Note the high bars at New York and Los Angeles

Now click @ Coverage


Coverage map

This map draws a line between any pair of cities that are within the coverage distance of each other.


Go back

Click on $ Normal to see the map of the solution again.


Go back again…

Click on Return to Main Menu to go back to the Main Menu


Now try exchanging sites

Click on Exchange Sites to manually change the solution.

Note that this option is not available with all objectives.


Exchange sites

In this example, we will see what happens if we locate in Philadelphia instead of New York

Click Exchange 2 Sites


Add Philadelphia

Click on Philadelphia


Tell SITATION to add it

Click on Pick node to Add


Tell SITATION which node to remove

Highlight New York (it should already be highlighted)


Tell it to delete New York

Click on Pick node to Drop


Now

SITATION will show you a message telling you the impact of the change (in this case, among other impacts, the average distance will go up by 6.45 miles)

Tell SITATION whether you want to make the change

Click Yes in this case


Now

Look carefully and there is now a facility in Philadelphia and no facility in New York

Click Close to go back to the Main Menu


You could now

Display the results of these manual changes or map the new solution, etc.

But we will skip all that. You should now know how to do all of that.


Instead

We will quickly go through the tradeoff curve options

Click on Tradeoff Curves


SITATION helps you out

To prevent you from inadvertently losing solutions, SITATION asks if you really want to run a new model

Click Yes


What do you want to do?

Tell SITATION which problem to solve.

Click Covering – MeDian in this example

Note that the other 3 options are not true multiple objective options, but they show the tradeoff between the indicated objective and the number of sited facilities


And

You can only use the Lagrangian option with this tradeoff curve. Tell SITATION how many facilities to locate

Type 8 for the number to locate


Now run the model

Type Quit and Run to find the tradeoff curve


Skipping a few obvious steps

Get to the menu of results

Click on Tradeoff Curve


The tradeoff results

SITATION found 6 solutions with an average distance ranging from 153 to 181 miles and 83% to 91% of the demand covered


See details of a solution

Click on a solution to see where you should locate.

Click on the third solution


And you locate at …

New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Tucson, Atlanta, Sacramento, Fort Wayne and Topeka

The average distance is 156.2 miles and 86.14% of the demand is covered


Go back

Click Cancel to go back to the menu of reports


Now draw the tradeoff curve

Click Graph Tradeoff Curve to see the curve


Here it is

As before, you can zoom in, change the look of the curve, etc.

We will skip all that. Experiment on your own.

Click Close to return to the report menu


And go back to the Main Menu

Click Quit (return to main menu) to go back to the Main Menu


Note

With this problem (Covering Median) you cannot manually exchange sites

Sorry about that….


Map the solutions

Click on Map results to see where you locate for each solution on the tradeoff curve


You get a blank map !!!

Click on the solution number you want to see in the box in the top left corner

Click on solution 3 now


Now

And now, as before, ask SITATION to show the facility names

Click on 2 Show Names


Here is the solution

You can click on other solutions and the map will automatically update itself

Try it and then…

Click Return to Main Menu


Now we can get out of SITATION

Click Exit SITATION


Again

To prevent you from inadvertently leaving before you want to, SITATION asks you to confirm that you really want to exit

Click Yes


And finally

Click OK to return to Windows


SITATION is (hopefully)

Relatively easy to understand if you know a bit about location models.

Relatively bullet proof. It should be very hard to crash it.

Try other options on your own


And note

You can print any of the reports, graphs or maps just by clicking on the appropriate Print button.


Enjoy

Have fun using SITATION. Experiment with• Forcing facility sites into or out of the solution• Other objective functions• Etc.

example use of sitation mark s. daskin department of ioe university of michigan ann arbor, mi 48109

Documents

university of michigansummer

compute distances

demand file

kind of distances

actual distances

load data

total distance

main menufirst